Poetry

Terminology

1. Alliteration: repetition of initial consonant sounds in words such as "rough and ready."
2. Assonance: repetition of vowel sounds without repetition of consonants. "My words like silent rain drops fell ..." - Paul Simon
3. Ballad: a poem in verse that tells a story.
4. Blank Verse: unrhymed form of poetry. Each line normally consists of 10 syllables in which every other syllable, beginning with the second, is stressed.
5. Canto: a main division of a long poem.
6. Consonance: the repetition of consonant sounds. Although it is similar to alliteration, consonance is not limited to the first letter of words: "... and high school girls with clear skin smiles..." - Janis Ian
7. Couplet: two lines of verse the same length that usually rhyme.
8. End rhyme: rhyming of words that appear at the ends of two or more lines of poetry.
9. Enjambment: the running over of a sentence or thought from one line to another.
10. Foot: the smallest repeated pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a poetic line.
    1. Iambic: an unstressed followed by a stressed syllable
    2. Anapestic: two unstressed followed by a stressed syllable
    3. Trochaic: a stressed followed by an unstressed syllable
    4. Dactylic: a stressed followed by two unstressed syllables
    5. Spondaic: two stressed syllables
    6. Pyrrhic: two stressed syllables
11. Free Verse: poetry that does not have a regular meter or rhyme scheme.
12. Heroic Couplet: consists of two successive rhyming lines that contain a complete thought.
13. Internal rhyme: occurs when the rhyming words appear in the same line of poetry: "You break my eyes with a book at buys sweet cake."
14. Lyric: short verse that is intended to express the emotions of the author; quite often, these lyrics are set to music.
15. Meter: patterned repetition of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry.
16. Onomatopoeia: use of a word whose sound suggests its meaning, as in clang, buzz, and twang.
17. Refrain: repetition of a line or phrase of a poet at regular intervals, especially at the end of each stanza.
18. Repetition: the repeating of a word, a phrase, or an idea for emphasis or for rhythmic effect within a poem or prose. "His laugh, his dare, his shrug / sag ghostlike ..."
19. Rhyme: the similarity or likeness of sound existing between two words.
20. Rhythm: the ordered or free occurrences of sound in poetry. Ordered or regular rhythm is called meter. Free occurrence of sound is called free verse.
21. Sonnet: a poem consisting of 14 lines of iambic pentameter. There are two popular forms of the sonnet, the Italian (or Petrarchan) and the Shakespearean (or English).
    1. Italian has two parts: an octave (eight lines) and a sestet (six lines), usually rhyming abbaabba, cdecde.
    2. English consists of three quatrains and a final rhyming couplet. The rhyme scheme is abab, cdcd, efef, gg.
22. Stanza: a division of poetry named for the number of lines it contains.
    1. Couplet: two-line stanza
    2. Triplet: three-line stanza
    3. Quatrain: four-line stanza
    4. Quintet: five-line stanza
    5. Sestet: six line stanza
    6. Septet: seven-line stanza
    7. Octave: eight-line stanza
23. Synecdoche: using part of something to represent the whole: "All hands on deck." (Hands is being used to represent the whole person.)
24. Verse: a metric line of poetry. It is named according to the kind and number of feet composing it.
    1. Monometer: one foot
    2. Dimeter: two feet
    3. Trimeter: three feet
    4. Tetrameter: four feet
    5. Pentameter: five meet
    6. Hexameter: six feet
    7. Heptameter: seven feet
    8. Octometer: eight feet

Types of Poems (We Will Study)

• Sonnet
• Autobiographical
• Image
• Haiku
• Voice
• Free Verse
• Music